CHALLENGES OF INFORMATION RETRIEVAL IN FIRST PHASES OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER PROCESS
CHALLENGES OF INFORMATION RETRIEVAL IN FIRST PHASES OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER PROCESS

Summary/Abstract: With increasing digitalization of data, including patents and scientific articles, more and more information about research challenges and innovation results are accessible. There have never been such excellent conditions for innovation in the history before, but a rapid growth of number of patents in last 20 years (especially in China) and thus overloading with (incomprehensible) information might be as well an inhibitor of innovation. It has become increasingly hard for researchers, technology transfer offices’ experts, intellectual property rights (IPR) managers, patent attorneys and patent examiners to understand the state of the art in the research field, and this is causing a duplication of research and increasing number of (potentially) invalid patents granted. This paper will discuss challenges universities (as well as other research organizations) face at the beginning of the innovation development, i.e. at the first phases of technology transfer process, in connection to available databases and currently available software tools: how to identify research opportunities, how to unite private and public data thus enriching IPR data, and contemplating on the biggest difficulties in prior art search. The paper thus brings together the results of interviews with heads of technology transfer offices in Japan, a case study of one of major universities showcasing the designing of a database as well as the process of connecting internal and external IPR related data and analysis of available IPR connected techniques.

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